Relationship-based access control for online social networks: Beyond user-to-user relationships

Yuan Cheng, Jaehong Park, Ravi Sandhu

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

82 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

User-to-user (U2U) relationship-based access control has become the most prevalent approach for modeling access control in online social networks (OSNs), where authorization is typically made by tracking the existence of a U2U relationship of particular type and/or depth between the accessing user and the resource owner. However, today's OSN applications allow various user activities that cannot be controlled by using U2U relationships alone. In this paper, we develop a relationship-based access control model for OSNs that incorporates not only U2U relationships but also user-to-resource (U2R) and resource-to-resource (R2R) relationships. Furthermore, while most access control proposals for OSNs only focus on controlling users' normal usage activities, our model also captures controls on users' administrative activities. Authorization policies are defined in terms of patterns of relationship paths on social graph and the hop count limits of these path. The proposed policy specification language features hop count skipping of resource-related relationships, allowing more flexibility and expressive power. We also provide simple specifications of conflict resolution policies to resolve possible conflicts among authorization policies.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust and 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, SocialCom/PASSAT 2012
Pages646-655
Number of pages10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes
Event2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, SocialCom 2012 and the 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust, PASSAT 2012 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
Duration: 3 Sept 20125 Sept 2012

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust and 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, SocialCom/PASSAT 2012

Conference

Conference2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, SocialCom 2012 and the 2012 ASE/IEEE International Conference on Privacy, Security, Risk and Trust, PASSAT 2012
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityAmsterdam
Period3/09/125/09/12

Keywords

  • Access Control
  • Security
  • Social Networks

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality

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